Sometime during Barbara Walters' incessant babbling during the episode of 20/20 she was halfheartedly watching and the start of the 11 o'clock news, Tina Ingle had dozed off with a half eaten bowl of popcorn resting periously on her lap.
Around 45 minutes into her impromptu nap, Tina was stirred awake by the sounds of voices in the condo's front yard. Opening her bleary eyes slowly, Tina sat the bowl of tettering popcorn on the coffee table and had to spend a moment or two to remind herself where exactly she was, feeling the usual sense of displacment one feels when one wakes up in a strange place for the very first time.
"Ought to drag your behind up to bed," Tina yawned before hearing the same group of voices that had originally woke her moments earlier.
"Damn Drunks," Tina cringed as she dragged her bare feet across the floor, hearing the sounds of who she thought were the next door neighbors yelling back and forth outside. "Guess you better get use to it girl if your gonna be going off to college in a few weeks."
Getting to the foot of the steps, Tina looked over her shoulder at the front door as the intensity of the voices outside continued to escalate.
"Why don't you at least steal a peek outside to see what our neighbors for the weekend look like before you drag yourself upstairs," Tina convinced herself.
Turning away from the stairs, Tina made a staggering beeline towards the front of the condo, before easing up behind the curtain so she could pull it back slightly and see what was going on in the front yard.
Carefully nudging aside the curtain to steal a glance outside, Tina instantly saw that it wasn't the neighbors that had been causing the fuss after all.
"That's Malik," Tina mouthed, seeing the youngest of the two Caldwells standing on the bottom step of the front porch, arguing with an rather animated young girl.
The woman seemed to be about the same age as Tina and Malik, 18 or 19, and it was obvious from the skanked up way she was dressed that Malik had met her at one of the beachside bars. Even in the dim light, Tina could tell the girl had dressed herself up to look like one of the way too many Jennifer Lopez wannabees that dominated the nightlife of seemingly every town in America.
>From the gyst of what Tina could discern from the conversation, she had correctly guessed that the girl had originally agreed to take Malik up on his invitation to come back to his place from the club, but once the girl had arrived, she had suddenly developed cold feet and wanted Malik to take her back to her friends at the club.
Malik was in the process of alternatly trying to convince the girl that he had lured that far to make the final short walk inside with him and then calling her a "Bitch" and a "Dicktease" when she again rebuked his advances.
Tina felt an internal twinge of voyeuristic guilt as she watched that cycle play out several more times before the girl finally flashed her middle finger at Malik and told him to "FUCK OFF!!"
Tina's eyes widened and her heart began to race inside her chest as the heated dialouge outside boiled over.
"FUCK YOU TOO," Malik immediatly yelled back, grabbing his crotch obscenely and gesturing towards the young girl as she turned and tried the best she could to hurry away drunkenly on her high heels. "Yeah Bitch..go back to that bar...you aint gonna find anything as good as this when you get there!"
Quickly scooting her still half asleep feet away from the window and into the kitchen when she saw Malik turn to walk up the stairs and into the house, Tina took several deep breaths as she poured herself a glass of water to relieve her suddenly parched throat.
Right in the middle of the first sip, Tina's entire body was jolted by the sound of Malik frustratingly slamming the front door shut before he walked by the kitchen's entrance and disappeared into the living room.
"Maybe I can just slip by him...go upstairs and go to bed," Tina cringed to herself as she tightly squeezed the glass in her hand.
Walking like a tentative child out of the kitchen, Tina tried her best to tiptoe her way towards the stairs before Malik's icey hot stare caught her at the bottom step.
"You still up?" he asked from the sofa.
"Y..Ye..Yeah...," Tina stuttered nervously. "I was just about to head up to sleep though...Me and Mom want to get an early start tomorrow...I left some popcorn there on the coffe table if you want."
"Thanks," Malik sighed blankly to Tina's peace offering. "Has Dad gone to bed already?"
"Yeah..I think so," Tina replied, her right foot still perched on the bottom step. "He went upstairs a few minutes after I got back from getting a couple of things at the grociery store...said he wanted to get a good nights sleep for your fishing charter in the morning."
"Anything on TV?" Malik asked, before shoving a handfull of popcorn into his mouth.
"No...I don't think so..they dont even get cable here..just the local antenna stations," Tina answered, trying her best not to sound as flustered as she felt.
"Well..I guess I'll be.....," Tina started before she noticed her opened purse was sitting on the floor, at the far end of the sofa.
Before she knew it, Tina felt something deeply engrained within her pysche click and an overwhelming need to retrieve her belongings before she went to bed crept into her conscience.
"I don't think he'd steal anything out of it," Tina's rational sensabilities told her eventhough her bare feet were already skimming across the floor, over to the far side of the couch to scoop up her things.
"Excuse me," Tina politly mumbled as she briefly blocked Malik's view of the televison.
Taking a quick seat on the opposite end of the sofa from Malik, Tina could immediatly feel the vibes of frustration still exuding from the 18 year old boy's pores as she made sure everything she needed was inside her purse.
Malik stole several glances to his left as Tina sat there, watching with lurid curiousity at her tanned thighs tightly pressed together as she riffled through her possessions.
